Cearly today's story line is Dice-K, and the game will go the way he goes.

From my vantage point, he wants out, and will continue to send the Sox that massage.

"So, you want me to be more concerned about pitch count? You want me to stop nibling at the corners and throw more stikes? Well, here you go, morons. Here you go. You Americans are stupid. If you had scouted me, you would have known who I was before I got here. You spent $100,000,000 on Nolan Ryan? I don't think so. You spent $100,000,000 on Dice-K, but you really didn't want Dice-K. Here's what you wanted. Stupid Americans. Bye, bye."

"And funny now with Crawford. You pay $20 mil a year for a guy who has never wanted to be a leadoff hitter and you make him a leadoff hitter, when you already have one of the best leadoff hitters in the game. Or worse, you don't know what to do with him? For $20 mil a year? Stupid Americans. Already, Crawford asking me about playing in Japan, and if I think people who run this team have any brains at all."

No other team has ever been as patient with any other player with no real results to show for it. I want to believe the talent is there but it has been 5 years folks, how can we still be talking about an inability to adjust? This guy has had every opurtunity in the world.

Um...Dice-K is who is he is. It's time we all realized he was a number 5 starter, and started treating him that way.

As for the non-seniscal rant by the OP on Crawford, so what if Crawford doesn't want to hit leadoff. If Francona tells Crawford that his job is to hit leadoff, then his job is to hit leadoff. We all have things at our job that we don't like doing. For me, it's putting cover sheets on my TPS reports. I hate doing that, but I do it to avoid my eight bosses from coming to my desk to remind me to do it.

It's a game of mystery. Stats are fun, but game to game, they often don't mean very much.

However, I think Jed is the man. Let me be the first to predict that he'll be the first player since Teddy Ballgame to hit 400.

However, he won't have anough plate appearances to qulify for the batting title.

Because, God knows, it's more important to reward a guy who played hurt last year than a kid who just might be the best hitter on the club. Silly? Yeah, maybe, bit if you watch him closely and see the plate coverage he gets from both sides of the plate and realize that his eye-hand coordination and quickness are up there with Pedroia, and he's hitting great on a day when the supposed greatest hitter on the team is striking out three times, and he's Stanford smart, and Pujlos disciplined.

Damn, it feels good to be excited about something!!!!!

I love this game. Sometimes. When I'm not hating it. Like I was three days ago.

The board is full of manic-depressive fair weather fans like GoBoSo, SPC, and ExDodgerfan. When they come here and vent just don't let them bother you. They will do an about face and have completely different opinions every week. Their passion overrides their reasoning.

You da man Jamaica. You da man. I guess you just happy, happy, happy all the time. Not much fun, but way cool. Cool to post how cool you is. So way much cooler and saner dan me. If ya was here I would give ya an big old hug and tell ya how proud of ya Ise am. But you aint and I told ya anyway. Nothing better than you happy happy people smiling all da time. Singing them songs. Winning the smiling face buttons!!! I just love those.

The board is full of manic-depressive fair weather fans like GoBoSo, SPC, and ExDodgerfan. When they come here and vent just don't let them bother you. They will do an about face and have completely different opinions every week. Their passion overrides their reasoning.Posted by JamaicaPlain67

Maybe Curt Young is using some of the 'magic' on Dice-K that he successfully used on the young arms out in Oakland. He and Dave Duncan for the Cards always seem to bring out the best in their respective pitching corps.

Show a little love! Maybe Curt Young is using some of the 'magic' on Dice-K that he successfully used on the young arms out in Oakland. He and Dave Duncan for the Cards always seem to bring out the best in their respective pitching corps.Posted by dustcover

Curt Young gets the love, maybe. Too early to tell, but this is the most impressive run of consecutive great starts I can ever remember. And the fact that Young let Beckett pitch 130 or so pitches the other night, that speaks volumes about him and the Sox' appropriate return to a more old school mentanilty, the same mentality, by the way, that Nolan Ryan has brought back to Texas.